IF part of aging gracefully is admitting mistakes and misjudgments, please be advised that I have officially matured. Now I understand why people are having fits over racist references in public school annuals in Hawaii. I didn't before. Personally, I thought they were overreacting -- until the gruesome murder earlier this month of James Byrd Jr., a black man who lived in Jasper, Texas. A change of heart on
racism in yearbooksOn June 7, 49-year-old Byrd was abducted, chained to a pickup truck by his ankles and dragged along a country road for over two miles, allegedly by three white supremacists. His body parts were strewn along the bloody trail. Stomach-wrenching stuff.
Byrd had been targeted, police said, because of his race. Three Caucasian men, ages 23-31, were arrested and charged with murder. Civil-rights leaders, politicians and hundreds of mourners came from all over the country to attend Byrd's funeral.
As they eulogized him in front of the TV cameras, in the glaring Texas sun, perspiration rolled down their faces. Their dark faces. Their black faces.
That's when I got it. By George, I finally got it.
Such was not the case back on July 7, 1997, when I wrote a column titled, "Kalaheo's problem isn't black and white." It addressed a controversial photo caption in the Kalaheo High School yearbook that mocked three singing African-American students. The cutline read, "I like pigs feet!...Where da collard greens? Who got da chintlinz?"
My thinking back then was, whoa, I guess the adviser didn't see that page. But, to me, sloppy supervision was the biggest sin of the annual's staff -- plus the principal and superintendent of schools not apologizing like crazy to the families involved.
But, jeez, why get all huhu? These were "just" high school kids, who don't know any better and who lived in a community that makes fun of different ethnicities all the time. "The problem is knowing where to draw the line. To young people, it's all very confusing," I wrote. "Why is it OK to laugh at comedian Frank DeLima but not all right to put racial slurs in a cutline?"
Fast forward to this year, when -- yikes! -- deja vu. A senior dressed in what looked like a Ku Klux Klan outfit was part of a Halloween photo montage in the Castle High School yearbook. While the teen claimed to have been masquerading as a druid priest, the principal mailed out letters of apology to students and parents because it resembled a KKK outfit "and the racism and bigotry it symbolizes."
Gimme a break, I thought again. It's a joke! A costume! At Halloween, the intent is to make fun of ridiculous characters and to dress up as folks we're not. And when attorneys and African Americans started hinting "lawsuit" again, my eyes rolled with exasperation.
BUT that was before James Byrd Jr. was murdered -- killed because he was black, dragged along a country road by his feet until his body broke apart, because three non-blacks apparently felt he was unworthy of life.
My double standard had been all too convenient. Why was racism so horrifying in one incident, but merely a case of black stereotyping in another? Hadn't the latter inevitably led to what happened in Jasper, Texas, at least in the minds of three twisted individuals?
Who was I, who are any of us, to say what is outrageous or insulting to a person of a particular ethnicity or gender or sexual persuasion, unless we belong to that group? A show of hands here: Who knows what it was like to be in Mr. Byrd's shoes?
Diane Yukihiro Chang's column runs Monday and Friday.
She can be reached by phone at 525-8607, via e-mail at
DianeChang@aol.com, or by fax at 523-7863.